"Man, what a cool mission" Shonda Collins (r) and friend walk to meet a family in the village. Back to Features

Shonda Collins leaves multiple Orleans missions to go on her lifelong "mission"
By Dave Harris, public affairs specialist, Louisiana Recovery Field Office

This could be a memorable aha! moment for all of us.

This is a story about you, me, and Shonda Collins, executive assistant for the Louisiana Recovery Field Office.  We all are unique, gifted, and loaded with skills and talent. We all have a dream – a dream you had when you were born, or maybe before. It’s a dream you can get quite emotional about.

Either you already know what it is, or you need to awaken that dream and pursue it. When you know what your dream is, you may describe yourself as “I am…”, not “I was…” or “I will be…”

Shonda says “I am…” Read on.

Author Bruce Wilkinson wrote The Dream Giver. He tested the idea of everyone having a dream inside by asking a waitress at the restaurant where he was eating what her dream was. Being emotionally involved with her dream, she started crying.

“I am to be a nurse,” she said.

And shortly after that encounter, she quit her job and entered nursing school.

Shonda always knew what she "is."

In 2003 she learned of the needs of children at the Mother of Peace Orphanage in Mutoko, Zimbabwe, while she worked as an assistant to the pastor of St. Paul Baptist Church in Racine, Wisconsin.

Hut on top of Mutemwa Mountain

“Man, what a cool mission,” she said. “So I decided to go.” That was for two weeks in 2003, and she’s been going every year since.  Even when she is taking a break from another ongoing "mission," helping the Army Corps of Engineers respond to the needs of the citizens of Louisiana as part of the Hurricane Katrina-Rita response.

The mission in Africa is more hands-on.  “I and people from various churches all over the country helped missionaries open up and support a clinic to look after the health issues of children,” she said, “giving them immunizations and checkups.”

Shonda said the orphans reside at Mother of Peace Orphanage because their parents have been killed, the child has been abandoned or has no family support, “or the child has been ostracized because he or she is HIV-positive or has AIDS.”

She told of a shockingly “strange belief” held by some of the adults in that region that someone with HIV/AIDS can be cured by intimacy with a chaste young girl.

“The children have all been through some type of tragedy and find a very loving environment, giving them the opportunity to look past their past life,” she said.

Shonda ministers to all the children she encounters on her trips. “I work with kids waiting to be seen in the clinic. I play with them and talk with them.” That took up her mornings.

Children sing native songs into a tape recorder

“In the afternoons, I did special mission work with the school, helping with lessons and seeing what they needed in the way of supplies,” she said, “since the teachers are volunteers. Comic books are one of the requested items, because they help in teaching English.”

Orphans weren’t the only ones who sought help at the clinic, she said. “People come from the communities and rural areas when they hear the clinic is about to start up. Sometimes they sleep outside waiting for the clinic to open.”

She arrived in New Orleans with Operation Blessings, a free clinic in New Orleans East where there were no medical facilities. Deciding she wanted to stay in New Orleans, Shonda has worked in the LA-RFO since September 2006 as a contractor.

“It’s a very important mission the LA-RFO is tasked to do,” she said. “You can’t rebuild until you clear away the old. We are helping with the vital recovery of the city, and I enjoy being a part of it.”

She said when industrial hygienist Gilbert Nickelson got sick, RFO coworkers took him to the emergency room and stayed with him.

“I saw then the kindness and quality of people who volunteer for this mission,” she said.

When the Corps mission is finished, she said she plans to expand on work for which she already volunteers.

“I’m a volunteer on the Summit Task Force focused on violent crime,” she said. “I’m secretary for the Criminal Justice Committee.”

Whether the “mission” is debris, demolition, criminal justice or ministering to orphans, Shonda is realizing her lifelong purpose.

“There’s something about it that calls you to do it, and once you answer, it feels right.”

Her crystal-clear dream, her calling? Without a glimmer of doubt, Shonda knows that she knows.

“I am a missionary.”